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Myanmar
Arts
and
Crafts
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We are focused on individual and small group trips throughout the country, tell us what you want via contact. |
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Objects are created from gold,
silver and iron; bronze, brass and copper
casting; relief work in stucco; turnery;
drawing and painting; lacquer ware;
sculpting in stone or marble and lapidary
work. Traditional skills are preserved
within artisans families and transferred from generation to generation to
keep the expertise in
handicraft.
Carved wooden figures found in stupas,
pagodas and
shrines of
the Bagan
period,
1057-1287,
suggest
Myanmar
carvers
raised the
standards of
the
woodcarving
skills |
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introduced from India
in the 9th and 10th Century.
Traditional designs
include the kanoke pan depicting intricate lotus
buds, blossoms and stems; scrollwork with a floral arabesque; chu or
stylized figures resembling lions with flowing manes; keinnaya and
keinnayi, mythical male and female birds with human heads and torso; beloo
or ogre; and galon or garuda, the mythical king of birds.
Carved wooden figures and
bas-relief works are usually found on the covered stairways or
zaungdans of pagodas, in monasteries, in highly embellished teak panels
and in many religious buildings and residences.
Even household furniture,
fixtures and utensils are decorated with wood carvings.
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Traditional arts
& handicraft skills
are carefully preserved in families and
passed down from generation to generation. Most of the artisans are
simultaneously at home and at work in their residence. Further info more
at e-books.
This group of smiling artisans is simultaneously at home and at
work in their residence located close to the Shwedagon pagoda.
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Traditional at
Inya Lake Hotel Yangon
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Antiques Shop
Chatrium Hotel Yangon |
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Today there is a tremendous diversity in the subjects that are carved.
There are Buddha images,
altars and other religious figures, nats or
spirits; elephant, oxen, buffalo, tiger, bullock cart and peacocks as
souvenirs for tourists; chinthes and other objects of Myanmar legends.
Orders can be placed for almost any model, at very reasonable prices.
Wood is cheaper - in Myanmar- and softer than other materials but can be
difficult to handle. Carvers carefully select wood with the right degree of
hardness, grain and hue for each object. Myanmar carvers prefer to work with
rosewood, ironwood, teak, tamalan (Dalbergia oliveri), hpaw (Adina
cordifolia) and yamanay (Gmelina arborea). |
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Woodcarvings
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Decorative
Woodcarvings |
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Woodcarving
Arts and Crafts |
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Sandalwood
Carving |
Sandalwood
Carving Buddha |
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At Bogyoke Market |
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Myanmar Arts and Crafts
Woodcarvings
at buildings, often monasteries, and
larger objects usually are commissioned
work, long discussions are held for the
right design, after its carefully drawn
on paper by the master craftsman who has
at least ten years' experience.
The tracing
of the design on wood from the drawings
is done by younger apprentices with less
than about 3 years' experience. They
lightly sketched in the major outlines
with charcoal, which were then checked
by the master craftsman. Mistakes are
covered with white chalk and redrawn in
black, when necessary.
For
particularly intricate details, the
paper design is cut out and pasted on to
the wood a template. The main outlines
were hewn out with an axe, saw, and
chisel and then passed over to carvers
with at least around 7 years' experience
to do the basic carving. Carvers use a
variety of awls, chisels, and gouges of
different sizes to cut, chip, and hollow
the wood into the desired shape.
Chisels are
deftly powered by mallets of tamarind
wood of different weights to vary the
pressure, depending on the type of
carving being done. The finishing was
left to apprentices with around 2 years’
experience. All stages of production
were closely supervised by the master
craftsman, who was not averse taking up
a chisel himself to animate a face with
a few quick strokes or to pare away a
sprig of foliage in the interests of
balance to a design. Apprentices were
always respectfully attentive to their
hsaya (teacher), the master craftsman
kept a fatherly eye on his young
assistants.
Myanmar
wood-carving
has been widely praised for its freedom,
spontaneity, and superb spatial
arrangement. Traditionally, the best
work was reserved for palaces and
monasteries, with teak the major medium
for architectural embellishment. Yamane
(Gmelina arborea), a hard wood from
Mogaung, was also popular for carving.
Being coarse-grained,
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Woodcarvings
at Shweinbium Monastery Mandalay
Monastery at
Mandalay with rich
teak wood carvings |
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a fine, detailed
finish was not possible with these two
woods. Instead, on
architectural work, which had to be
solid to withstand the abrasive effects
of searing sun alternating with heavy
rain, the carver concentrated on
achieving a boldness and liveliness of
form, along with a balance of sweeping
curves and dark shadows to catch the eye
of the viewer below,
more. |
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Here are not many
way’s one can earn good
money for their
livelihood, one of the
exceptions is creativity
with the focus on useful
artwork. Typical
creative work related to
this are all kind of
Buddha statues,
figurines and sculptures
made from various
materials such as
marble, bronze, brass,
wood carving, jade,
stone and other
materials.
For creative arts and
crafts it needs some
artistic ability but not
very much since the task
to create an object is
usually divided into
several steps, often
only the master artist
do the sketching and
apply this to the
material the object is
made from.
Creative work skills
usually are passed
within a bigger family
from generation to
generation. That means a
person can really grow
with the time and can
earn a good livelihood.
Since more and more
people have extra money
to spend for decorating
their house, temples, or
just for a simple
donation there is brisk
business. |
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One of the
creativity
hotspot is
Mandalay, in the
quarter just
behind the
Mahamuni Temple.
People come from
all corners of
the country to
commission new
marble, wood,
stone, brass and
bronze
Buddha’s
to
be placed at
various shrines
as donations,
and there is
also a
substantial
international
business in
particular with
China, Korea and
Japan. |
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Myanmar lacquer fruit plate round from
Bagan
Lacquer bowl made in Bagan has similar properties as plastic but
is natural. |
Myanmar Lacquer
is
somehow a crossover between art
and everyday use items. It is
the top cottage industry in
Myanmar these items used in
households are a combination of
porcelain, glass and plastic.
This technique probably came in
directly or indirectly from
China as so many other things
and processes over the last few
thousand years.
There are some
indications from Manshu texts,
one was.. in the Pyu kingdom, there were over a hundred
Buddhist monasteries with courts
and rooms all decked with gold
and silver, coated with cinnabar
and bright colors, smeared with kino and covered with
embroidered rugs... There is no
specific mention of lacquer, but
it indicates the use of tree
gums and resins.
At
Bagan today is the biggest
cottage industry in lacquer
production and there are some
indication that here it all
starts during the heydays of
Bagan in the 15th. Century. At
an exhibition at Yangon in 1918
a teak box from 1284 painted
with lacquer was shown the item
was found near the Mingalazedi
pagoda and got lost during the
Second World War.
Lacquer art ware
is a local version of today’s
plastic, it has similar
properties und is used in the
same way, the difference is,
it’s natural. Using this
technique for decorative arts
started in the Ava period. There
are references during this
period to lacquer artisans as
prisoners of war,
more. |
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Black plate with rectangle gold
pattern |
Table and plate with flowers
and geometric pattern |
Brown plate round |
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Plate on a painted and
gilded table |
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Lacquer elephant with gold plating
on top |
Dark red vase |
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Copyright by www.allmyanmar.com |
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